Chapter 1 - The Camera Above the Kitchen
Kelsey Ward entered the bright Maryland kitchen and saw her husband standing over seventy-one-year-old Nancy with an aluminum bat raised in both hands. Nancy lay beside her shattered gold-rimmed glasses, weak but conscious, one arm wrapped protectively around her shoulder. Kelsey dropped her keys, seized the bat before Ryan could bring it down and twisted it from his grip with the controlled force of a trained officer. “Move,” Ryan hissed, “or you will regret choosing that useless old woman over your own husband.” Kelsey placed the bat flat on the marble counter and stepped between them. “She is not useless. She is my mother.” Nancy looked toward the pantry and whispered, “He did not come here only to frighten me. He brought the chemicals.” Ryan’s arrogance disappeared when Kelsey lifted part of Nancy’s broken frame and noticed a matching glass fragment embedded in his shoe. “Check your sole,” she said. “You carried the evidence across my floor.” His eyes moved toward the small security camera above the cabinets. Kelsey followed his gaze and called military police and county emergency services. But when an officer opened the camera application, the entire hour had been erased remotely. A final notification remained on the screen: DELETION AUTHORIZED—COLONEL KELSEY WARD.
